Stress for Promotion at Work

One of the many causes of stress in patients who consult doctors
working in industry is the type that experienced by people who haven't
received the recognition and promotion they feel is justified by their
qualities.

Promotion in any firm always entails a large element of luck.
It is sometimes influenced by bad luck, and at other times by sheer
vindictiveness or self-interest of more senior people in the
organization. Once the chance of promotion has gone, it has frequently
gone forever.

Those people who, rightly or wrongly, have been deprived of the
career they had wanted but are too old or too encumbered to change jobs
can often find happiness by being encouraged to succeed in some
different field of activity.

This was known in one organization I worked for as 'lateral
promotion'. It was encouraged as a form of compensation, but it is a
deliberate compensation, not a subconscious one, like the short man who
becomes a tyrant, a formerly unattractive woman who becomes promiscuous
or a once bullied person who becomes a lunatic driver. Disappointed by
their career as a banker, lawyer or accountant, the person who never
quite made it may be forever happy as they climb some alternative
ladder. Read more